Eclipsed's Zainab Jah on Being an African Woman in American Theater

"It made me wonder, what would change a Westerner's opinion of what is to be an African?"

Most Popular

Kevin Berne

AuthorCreated with Sketch.

By Zainab Jah

Apr 25, 2016

Standing at the bus stop, I felt a pain I'd never felt before. Nothing in my life experience could describe the feeling that gripped my whole body, especially my hands and feet. After running home, Mummy assured me everything was all right. I was just cold.

Cold? Having recently moved to London, this was my first time experiencing cold, which was a rather traumatizing sensation for a ten-year-old African girl from Freetown, Sierra Leone. How could people live in such a place that required you to wear more than one layer of clothing? I cried and demanded to be sent back to Sierra Leone—that very day if possible. But the indignities of my young life in England didn't stop with the weather.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

Timothy Naylor

At my proper little girl's grammar school, my fellow students and teachers simply considered me "African." Which I was, of course, but their perception of an African upbringing brought to mind images of me emerging from a mud hut, half naked swatting at the flies dancing about my head. Despite having come from a former British colony, my new peers could hardly fathom that I spoke English—even more offensive yet, that I spoke the Queen's English better than most of them.

Most Popular

Timothy Naylor

Coming from a country where everyone "looked like me," I was now suddenly the consummate outsider. I had come from a place with a sense of privilege and autonomy. The whole notion of societal and professional limitations due to race was an alien concept to me. Even as a ten year old who often her spent her time day-dreaming in the elephant grass, the sense of a racial glass ceiling just didn't exist. If you dreamt it, you became it. Mine was an educated, middle-class family, awash with doctors (my father and his siblings), lawyers (several uncles), teachers (everyone else), and even a mayor thrown in for good measure (my grandfather). I'd been sent to Freetown at six months old while my parents continued their medical school education, first in the UK, then later Germany for my father. This was my reality.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

Even as a ten year old day-dreaming in the elephant grass, the sense of a racial glass ceiling just didn't exist. If you dreamt it, you became it.​

Having been sent back to England from Freetown to live with my parents, though, there were many back in Sierra Leonewho projected their dreams on me. Like many immigrants at the time, notions of me growing up to be a doctor or a lawyer, something professional and with standing, were a given. (In comparison, the thought of taking to the stage was as far-fetched as running off to join the circus.) Yet the seeds of my becoming a performer, ironically, were planted in Africa by my grandmother who ran a children's theater group and had me treading the boards the minute I could read.

As Titania in the Classical Theatre of Harlem's production of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'

Leland Durond Thompson

Fast forward, now fully assimilated and a London teen, my parents pushed hard for me to get good grades with the implied promise of taking my A-levels and then going off to Cambridge to study law. Or journalism. Either would do. The plan took a sharp detour: I auditioned for a dance program at a small local college and got in. My parents decided it was time for a talk. We agreed that I could pursue these side interests so long as the focus was on my academics. That went completely off the rails when I got into London Contemporary Dance School, one of the most prestigious schools in Europe. After spending several years as a modern dancer and eventually ending in New York, I woke up one day and said, "I want to act."

After years of expressing myself through movement, I now had a desperate need to speak.

Timothy Naylor

Unlike my formal dance training, I decided against traditional conservatory actor training and went headlong with on-the-job training, auditioning for everything I could. Capitalizing on my confidence in movement, I was able to land small roles in New York City's Off-Broadway scene. Working alongside actors who'd gone to Julliard, Yale, NYU and the like, it was a perfect lab for me to observe, dissect, and deconstruct what they did and then reassemble it into my own custom method. As long as I knew my lines and didn't bump into furniture, no one would know how little I knew.

As my skills developed, my British accent meant I was offered a lot of roles in "the classics," something that continues to this day. At one point, my entire résumé consisted of only three playwrights: Shakespeare, Euripides, and Sophocles. The discipline and focus required of this particular canon reached a high point last year when I was cast as the first black female Hamlet in a major theater production at Philadelphia's Wilma Theatre. After winning Best Actor from the Philadelphia Critics Awards, it made me wonder, What would change a Westerner's opinion of what is to be an African?

As Ophelia in the California Shakespeare Theatre 's production of 'Hamlet'

It was around that time emerging writers such as Lynn Nottage, Danai Gurira, and Katori Hall began to smash the image of the "single African narrative," a term that Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (author of Half of a Yellow Sun) coined to describe the way Westerners categorize Africans in broad stereotypes (primitive savage, starving poor, warlord, despot, etc), bereft of nuance, complexities, in short, humanity. Writers like Nottage, Gurira, and Hall—who I was fortunate to be asked to work with, either in workshops, readings, or full productions—managed to weave together multifaceted perspectives and dramas, from the period to the contemporary, the comic to the profoundly tragic. So demanding and illuminating are the characters in their plays, to do them justice, I've done exhaustive amounts of research and learned far more about the African experience than I'd ever imagined.

With Ross Belcher, playing Hamlet in The Wilma Theatre's production of 'Hamlet'

Alexander Izillaev

Most recently, I've been playing the role of a rebel soldier Maima in Danai Gurira's Eclipsed. It's the story of four "war wives" (among them Oscar winner Lupita Nyong'o, Pascale Armand, and Saycon Sengbloh) held captive in an officer's compound in war-torn Liberia. At first glance, my character seems to be nothing more than a manipulative, violent, ruthless product of war. But we later see, under the veneer of AK-47's and RPG's, there is still some vulnerability, fear, and humanity left in her. It begs the question, Who would you be in that situation? Through the examination of a hypothetical, the women become the universal "we."

Still, something that always stands out to me, in each performance, is hearing much of the white audience gasp when one of the war wives cracks wise. Meanwhile, the Africans in the crowd break into full belly laughs. The contrast always reminds me of that ten-year-old African girl, waiting at a bus stop in London, not yet understanding that there could be beauty found in something as savage as a snowflake.